Democrats tried to stave off panic over the Virginia governor’s race on the final day of early voting — in a blue-state election now suddenly too close to call.
“Democrats are facing a DISASTER,” the Democratic Governors Association warned in a last-minute fundraising email that pointed to recent polls showing the party’s candidate, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, falling behind GOP newcomer Glenn Youngkin, just days ahead of the Nov. 2 election.
“We can’t let the GOP break the Democratic firewall in Virginia – because what happens there will lay the groundwork for 2022,” the message continued.
The two candidates’ plans of attack were evident on the campaign trail Saturday.
Youngkin, who has harnessed simmering parental anger over school COVID policies and race-based curriculum battles to gain ground among independent voters and disaffected Democrats, drew hundreds of supporters to a rally in Alexandria, one of the state’s bluest cities.
“This is about the values that Virginians hold dear,” the Republican told reporters. “I’ve had more people say, ‘I’ve never voted Republican before and I’m voting for you.’ We’ve got folks streaming across the aisle.”
Meanwhile, McAuliffe tried to shore up his base in Norfolk, where only 40 people turned up for a rally headlined by Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine.
“As of this morning, we have had over a million early votes,” McAuliffe reassured the sparse crowd. “We are substantially leading in the early vote.”
But with a long history of heavy Republican turnout on Election Day, the stark enthusiasm gap between the two parties is looming large.
President Biden won the Old Dominion in 2020 by a comfortable 10-point margin, thanks largely to the densely populated, strongly Democratic counties that hug the state’s border with Washington, DC.
His victory capped a 16-year streak for Democrats there. Not since 2004 has a Republican presidential candidate taken Virginia.
McAuliffe, a longtime Dem insider who has been a close confidant of Bill and Hillary Clinton and served as Virginia’s governor from 2014 to 2018, once appeared to be a shoo-in for a second term.
But Biden’s steeply declining approval rating has depressed the Democratic base. A Washington Post poll this week found 42 percent of Virginia voters strongly disapprove of the president’s performance — while just 21 percent strongly approve. Such a lopsided result usually translates into heavy turnout for the opposing party.
And McAuliffe’s own gaffes — notably his September comment, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach” — have been seized by the Youngkin campaign as prime examples of the Democrat’s distance from voters’ concerns.
School board meetings in the Democratic strongholds of Fairfax County and Loudoun County have made national headlines, as parents protested policies they say are indoctrinating their children with the tenets of critical race theory.
Youngkin notched an eight-point advantage over McAuliffe among likely voters in a Fox News survey released Thursday that showed the Republican leading 53-45. Other polls this week indicated the two are neck-and-neck.